Values-Driven Community Marketing
How to lead with your vision, purpose, and values when marketing community.
Marketing strategy for community should be more personal, more opinionated, and more controversial than when you’re marketing other stuff.
When you’re selling anything, there are a few questions that are always key:
Who is the ideal person this will work for?
What problem does this solve for them?
What are the features and benefits that are important to highlight?
Those questions ideally help shape the product you end up selling and your marketing strategy for attracting the right customers.
The same prompts are also useful when marketing community. And in community there are a few more questions that help you build a long-term sustainable business:
What is my unique, disputable point-of-view on this topic? (parenting, entrepreneurship, wood-carving, whatever your community is about)
What is the ideal world I want to live in and how can the community be a microcosm of that world?
What are my values, and how do they intersect with the values the group of people I’m gathering?
Leading with values and a unique point-of-view when marketing community has significant benefits:
Stronger community engagement. When members agree on core values, they’re likely to have a lot more in common. You create a helpful filter for increased connection.
Higher member retention. When members join because they believe in your vision for the world, being a member of your community becomes part of their identity. They tend to stay longer than when they evaluate your value based on perks.
Collective power. A group of people who have a similar vision for the world can take real action together towards that world. That power can range from group discounts to political advocacy for an issue that supports your specific members.
The more you lean into your uniqueness in your marketing, the easier it will be for your community to attract the right members. And the more likely those members will be to stick around.
How to incorporate vision into your community offer
In a successful business that centers community, members don’t just join because of the benefits they receive personally. They ideally join because they believe in the vision the group has and being a part of it therefore enforces a piece of their identity.
For example, if the group has a vision towards a more just world, joining reinforces them as a person that values justice. If the group paints a picture of a world where more people embrace fun, being a part of it is a reminder of a member’s fun side. Whatever your community emphasizes, attracts members who also value that and it reinforces that value within them.
To reflect on this for your community, start by reflecting on the questions shared above:
What is my unique, disputable point-of-view on this topic? (parenting, entrepreneurship, wood-carving, whatever your community is about)
What is the ideal world I want to live in and how can the community be a microcosm for it?
What are my values and the values the group of people I’m gathering will have in common?
Once you’ve brainstormed some ideas, below are some statements to complete for your community. These are statements you could include on your about page, as an introduction to your community offer, and in how you talk about your community generally.
We believe…
We gather people who believe…
We want to build a world that…
We exist to…
When you join us, you are…
Instead of marketing a community only based on what members tangibly get, you can market it based on who they become as a result of being a part of it.
As examples of what this can look like, I looked at 3 popular membership products that are sold based only on member benefits and reimagined what new marketing phrases would look like if they were being marketed as a community instead. I picked a few of the prompts above and filled them in as an example.
AARP Membership
AARP is a nonprofit interest group and advocacy group focusing on issues affecting those over the age of fifty. They’re one of the largest membership organizations in the US with 38 million members who mostly join to access their exclusive benefits.
Though they’re a membership, they’re not really a community. They don’t have many ways for members to connect with each other.
And they also don’t market their offers based on what their members might collectively be able to accomplish. They’re all focused on what an individual gets from joining.
What if AARP were a community? Or, what if they brought more of their mission into the pitch for joining the membership?
Here are some sentences they might add to help their potential members think more collectively:
We exist to enhance quality of life for all as we age.
We gather adults 50-plus interested in exploring together ways to live long, healthy lives.
We believe everyone should be able to choose how to live as they age.
When you join us, you’re supporting a movement that values care, interdependence, and collective power.
The Brooklyn Museum
The Brooklyn Museum is a museum that, compared to other museums I know, does a better job bringing their point-of-view into their membership program. The first few sentences describing it are a start of a statement of the identity of those who would join.
“The Brooklyn Museum is one of the world’s most welcoming and contemporary encyclopedic museums and is every bit Brooklyn: creative, relevant, diverse, and trailblazing. When you join as a Member, you celebrate the great art, big ideas, and courageous conversations that can only be found here.”
They lead with the identity of the membership, and as a result, the identity of the member who would be interested in joining.
Here are some ideas on how they might lean into that even more:
We believe great art is a vehicle for courageous conversations that create change.
We want to build a world where art is for everyone.
We gather creative, diverse trailblazers to celebrate and learn together through art.
When you join us, you support our vision towards a more connected and creative world.
Chelsea Piers Fitness
Are you describing your community like a gym membership? I hope not! Below is an example of how a gym describes their benefits and why someone might join. This one is interesting because they’re using the word community, but all of the benefits are described in how they would benefit the individual. There’s no collective vision.
This gym hosts parties, training groups, and other events for members. They seem to be making an effort to connect members to each other, but all the description is all about the individual.
Here’s how we might add more collective language and lean into community:
We believe working out is always more fun with new friends.
We gather people who believe in the power of community for accountability and connection.
We want to build a world where we all have a better relationship to our bodies.
We exist to help you take care of both your physical and social health.
Some final thoughts
Don’t add these statements to your website as purely a marketing strategy.
These statements should feel true to what you believe and the values that are noticeably alive in your community. Otherwise they’ll sound like meaningless filler copy.
I picked these three non-community memberships as extreme examples of membership offers that lead with features and what they might look like as offers that lead with purpose and point-of-view.
But there’s a reason why these 3 memberships don’t lead strongly with their values. It’s because clear values (should) alienate potential members. AARP for example seems to have chosen to be more generic in order to appeal to as many members as possible. That’s a strategy that makes sense for them.
If you have significantly less than 38 million members, and community (people connecting with each other, not just getting membership perks) is core to your business, then leading with point-of-view will help you attract the right members and build a tighter-knit community experience that lasts.
If you want to explore ways to bring more vision and values into how you grow your community, fill out this quick form and schedule a no obligation call with us to learn about how we can work together.
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